The Problem with Horcruxes
by Madhatter1981
Summary: During the final battle Harry explains to Voldemort how the wizards plans to achieve immortality wouldn't be working the way the man thought. With an epilogue.


**A/N** **:** Don't own, don't get any compensation, just for fun.

 **The Problem with Horcruxes**

It had been a grueling battle between the two foes, all of the spells that they thought could give them an advantage were used by Harry and Voldemort. And not just combat spells, cooking spells, charms and transfigurations to distract, anything they could think of to get the upper hand in their battle was used by the combatants. Looking back on it, Harry thought that if the NEWT instructors could have seen him then he would have passed the practical portions of the test in a cinch, something that Hermione hexed him for when he mentioned it to her.

Seeing Voldemort pause in his spellcasting Harry brought his wand up, feeling that it was wrong to shoot a man when he wasn't able to defend himself. Anyways, Harry felt pretty good about how he had fought it out with Tom. Considering how he was completely unprepared the last time they had fought in the graveyard Harry felt that he was holding his own quite well against Voldie. Remembering something that Sirius had said one night at Grimauld about the value of distraction as a battle tactic and wanting to try to get an answer about something he had been curious about during the last year, Harry opened up his mouth and addressed his foe.

"So Tom tell me, how does it feel to know that I've destroyed all of your little trinkets, like your diary and such." Ignoring Hermione's groaning at his giving tactical knowledge away to the enemy, Harry continued with his plan.

"Did Lucius tell about how his action led to my being able to destroy your diary?" Ignoring Voldemort's snarl Harry continued on, "Really Tom, a diary, were you having identity issues while you were making your first Horcrux or did you not have anyone to talk to and a diary was the only feedback you were able to get? After all, hardly any of your 'followers' kept an eye out for you over roughly a decade, regardless of what they said at your comeback party in the graveyard that you were nice enough to invite me to."

Harry had to quickly launch himself to the ground as Voldemort whipped out his wand and sent a blood-to-acid curse at him. Smiling slightly to himself at the knowledge that he was getting to Tom, Harry continued with his plan.

"Really Tom, did you actually even stop and think through your plan to use multiple Horcruxes at all? From what I understand of it each time you make a Horcrux you split your soul in half. So if my math is correct that means that you have only 1/128th of a soul remaining in your body." Harry pronounced, with a triumphant smirk on his face at the look on Voldemort's face.

While it was well known that the self-styled 'Lord Voldemort' had a volatile temper when told something that didn't fit his world view, very few people could claim to say that they saw the megalomaniac dumbstruck. If Harry wasn't worried about surviving the next hour he'd be rolling on the floor with laughter right about now at how flummoxed Tom looked.

Voldemort couldn't believe what he just heard, surely Potter had to be lying about how much soul he still had. As the current reining Dark Lord tried to gather his equilibrium before one of his enemies, or even worse, his allies saw how out of sorts he was and took advantage of it, The-Bloody-Boy-Who-Just-Wouldn't-Die continued talking. Voldemort listened in shock as one of his main plans for immortality was torn apart in front of him as the boy continued to natter on.

"Now I admit on the surface I can see why you would think splitting your soul would be a good way to achieve temporary immortality. After all you would be able to stick to the mortal plain if one of your enemies managed to get a mortal hit against you, such as a housewife and her fifteen month baby", here Harry paused to let the people snorting and snickering collect themselves before he continued. Voldemort knew that he should order his followers to show people why they should laugh at Lord Voldemort but he was too caught in morbid fascination listening to his mortal enemy to give the order.

"As far as I can figure, when you were thinking this through you probably thought with seven being one of the most powerful numbers, as we learn from Arithmancy", while most people would complain that Harry didn't know what he was talking about not having taken the higher level electives such as Arithmancy and Ancient Runes; Harry had struck a deal with the professor to take them as self-study electives, given that he was well aware of the amount of eyes on him and that not all of them where friendly. "the only problem with your plan is that instead of splitting your soul into seven equal pieces you instead split your soul so that you only have 1/128th of your soul still in your body by my count, as I previously stated." Seeing Voldemort so off balance and not willing to give up his advantage of having all the forces against him so still and discombobulated, Harry pressed on.

"Now I may be off on the order that you made your horcruxes but I'm fairly sure that my math is sound. The way I figure it your first horcrux was the first one that I dealt with; that being your diary. The diary horcruxes being your first that meant it caused you to split half your soul, leaving you with half of it remaining in your body. A linear mathematical progression would suggest that your second one split your soul to a fourth, your third one to an eight, fourth one to a sixteenth and so on to your eighth and last one leaving you; again if my math is right, having only 1/128th of your soul remaining in your body at this time. It goes without saying that you shouldn't try the horcruxes ritual anymore regardless that all of your previous ones have been destroyed, even the one you entrusted to Belatrix Lestrange that she kept in her vault." As Harry finished his explanation he took a breath, to his surprise and slight humor Harry noticed that all of the combatants had frozen to listen to his explanation on how much soul Voldemort still had left. With a somewhat content smile, seeing that things seemed to be going his way for the first time in a while, Harry continued.

Tom "Voldemort" Riddle was standing on the field of battle shocked and scared out of his mind, Potter couldn't be right in his figures. If what the brat said was true the most feared Dark Lord ever had to greatly change his plans regarding gaining immortality, seeing that splitting what was left of his soul would probably kill him anyways. Realizing that his hated foe was still speaking, and after the bombshell that he had just dropped worried about what new revelation he would bring up next, Tom refocused his attention on the last of the Potters.

"Really, given how little soul you have left it's a wonder if you could still consider yourself human." At that statement everyone there shot a look at the rather more snakelike than human dark lord. Harry quickly dodged out of the way of the frustrated Killing Curse that Voldemort sent his way trying to get him to shut up, but The-Boy-Who-Just-Wouldn't-Stop-Talking continued.

Glaring at Potter, Voldemort suddenly became afraid at the look on the boy's face. Gone was the fearful and frantic look that Harry seemed to have on his face for most of their fights, now the boy had what could be considered a thoughtful, calculating look on his face that would be more at home on a Slytherin.

"And if we take into consideration how you regained your body, you're really no more than a magical construct if we're to be honest." Felling rather insulted at how Potter described his regained body as well as slightly worried what some of his supporters who had flocked to his banner more in support of the pure blood movement rather than in support of Lord Voldemort and his plan to rule the magical and muggle world, would take what was being said; caused Voldemort to start throwing whatever spell came into his mind in order to defeat Potter and regain authority over his followers.

Harry's quidditich trained skills were on display as he ducked, dodged, and summoned obstacles to keep himself from being impacted by any of the mad man's spells. While Harry didn't send back any spells due to not wanting to break his concentration, in the writing of the official history of 'The Second Voldemort War' the skill in which Harry managed to dodge Voldemort's spells, as his seemingly supernatural ability to detect when the feared wizard was about to launch said spells was spoken with reverence.

After roughly fifteen minutes of spell fire from Voldemort and a rather athletic if dangerous aerobics Harry finally saw an opening in Voldemort's spell casting. Bringing his wand up Harry barely even whispered _'finite'_. Upon being hit by the spell Voldemort's magically constructed body returned to the components that made it; a vial's worth of blood, an old femur and a human hand in a puddle of viscus body fluid.

As Voldemort felt his constructed body start to disintegrate and terrified that Harry's theory about his Horcruxes was right, Voldemort attempted to summon life-force from his followers, using the Dark Mark. In the post-fight cleanup it was noted that the Death Eaters bodies all seemed to have died at the same time due to whatever Voldemort tried to do after Harry defeated him with such ease.

As the dust settled many things changed from how they were when Harry first entered the magical world. Working with the Wizengamot Harry got a series of laws passed that restricted the discrimination against non-humans such as vampires and werewolves, with the werewolves taking Wolfsbane and being allocated a small cell on the night of the full moon; vampires were allowed to feed off of willing witches and wizards, as each citizen had their own wand it was considered a safe practice, if looked down on by most of 'proper' society. While this was greeted with much joy from most of those communities extremists such as Fenrir Greyback and his clan and other werewolves and vampires of the same ilk were systematically hunt by a special hit-squad/auror force lead by the husband/wife team of Remus and Tonks Lupin (after they got married Nymphadora legally changed her name, replacing her dreaded first name with her last name by birth, much to her mother's annoyance).

In the new government created post-Voldemort it was considered a crime to use terms such as 'mudblood'; 'half-blood', while frowned on was allowed as long as it was not said in a derogatory fashion. The sentencing for both was a mandatory, involuntary stay in the Muggle world under Auror guard for sixth months to a year with the magic bound, the 'reasoning' being; that if you were so aware of what a mudblood or half-blood looked like you must like spending time with them so who was the magical world to deprive you of that. The sentence got longer if you were caught using the word more than once.

To the annoyance of some, Harry was given complete and total control of all of the fallen Death Eater's vaults. To Harry's credit he donated most of the monies to funds that help repair the damage cause during the war.

Harry's relief was great as the years went on and the furor of the war settled down. He married Luna Lovegood. It turned out that Molly and Ginny had been potioning Harry during his Sixth year. The Potters had five kids, a set of twin boys, a son to carry on the Black and Lovegood names respectively and a girl who kept all of her brothers out of trouble at Hogwarts and beyond, none named 'Albus Severus'.

Ron and Hermione got married and set horrible examples for their children with their constant fighting and bickering. Hermione worked for the ministry in the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures, making sure that all of the work that she, Luna and Harry did after the end of the war wasn't undone by obsessive and bitter purebloods who didn't like that changes happening to their world. Ron, after trying and failing to get into the Auror corps. or on in a keeper position with the Chudley Cannons (something that really rankled him), went to work under his father in the 'Misuse of Muggle Artifacts' driving Hermione insane with his and her father-in-law constantly mis-understanding and mispronunciation of the most simple concepts and terms from the non-magical world.

Ginny and Molly were unfortunately in Azkaban, luckily no longer staffed by Dementors, after trying and failing to slip Harry a love potion on the eve of his wedding to Luna. In her case before the Wizengamot Ginny's defense was that she was simply paying Luna back as her former friend must have slipped Harry a potion after he beat Voldemort, given that before he went of the fight Harry was dating her. This line of defense brought up the fact that Harry had dated Luna before Ginny in his sixth year, under veritaserum Ginny admitted that she had potioned Harry in her fifth year to get him attracted to her. Her barrister withdrew himself from her case at that point leading to her being sentenced to five years in the low security section of Azkaban. When it came to light that it was Molly Weasley who engineered the plot and taught Ginny how to brew the potion in the first place, the Weasley matriarch found herself in a cell beside her daughter.

While Harry eventually got used to the fame that the wizarding world gave him, it took him quite some time to get over the survivors guilt that he carried around with him. Not surprisingly being Teddy's godfather, and seeing the young boy so content and happy went quite a long way toward healing the scars that he had. When he and Luna had their first child, Remus and Tonks, who survived the final battle, were named Aunt and Uncle/Godparents to James Sirus Potter. When he heard the name, Remus sent a plea to Merlin that he didn't turn out too much like his namesakes' or Hogwarts wouldn't survive, Tonks shushed him and gave him a swat on the shoulder on her way to holding her godson for the first time.

With his family fortune, along with the residual that he and Luna got from WWW and The Quibbler the Potter's didn't have much of a need to finds jobs right away. They spent the first five years of their marriage traveling the world exploring. It was only with Luna first pregnancy that the Potters decide to come back to Britian.

Neville and Susan were made godparents of their first daughter, named, Lily Selene. When Hermione read the announcement in the Prophet she was offended that she wasn't chosen. Getting in touch with Harry revealed the fact that Hermione wasn't even in contention due to how abysmally Hermione treated Luna after she and Harry got together after the war. Hermione spent a good deal of time in Australia reconnecting with her parents, who decided to stay down under. When she got back she found Ron in bed with Lavender Brown. Upon being named Transfiguration professor at Hogwarts she stayed single for the rest of her life, wondering 'what if'.

It was a happy time for most of the Wizarding world, closer ties with the muggle world, led by Harry brought about many new innovations. It was with discoveries from the muggle world that led to a viable post-Crucaitus treatment that worked well enough to bring Neville's parents back. Harry was named godfather to Neville's first child and given an open invitation to Longbottom Manner for both him and Luna.

Harry, who was always so pessimistic growing up spent most of his post Voldemort life with a wide smile on his face. All of the trials and tribulations that followed after his defeating Voldemort were met, if not with a smile then, with an acceptance said to be of that of a much older, learned man. Harry if he were to be asked would have said that he had finally learned to accept himself and his place in the wizarding world, which is what lead to his new outlook. Unfortunately for the press he would only give interviews through The Quibbler.

While all of the people who fought in The Second Voldemort War had pains that would flair up from time to time, Harry was overjoyed that the one thing that never bothered him after his defeat of Voldemort was his _Scar_.

 **The End**

 **A/N** **:** Please review, let me know what you think.

 **A/N 2** **:** Yes I realize that the plot changes part way through.


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